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VANCOUVER -- As Vancouver’s digital and tech industries grow, anchored by heavyweights like social media management company Hootsuite, the city is looking at adjusting parts of an industrial zone east of Cambie Street to encourage more digital companies to relocate there.

The review is being spurred in part by a joint purchase by Hootsuite’s owner Ryan Holmes and Westbank Projects developer Ian Gillespie of a key property near Main Street and 4th Avenue.

In September the two men bought an entire block of industrial-zoned land for $40.5 million from Oxford Properties as part of a plan to consolidate Hootsuite’s operations into a single campus. Hootsuite already uses two buildings on the property, including a 27,000 square foot satellite office located in the former bank cheque-clearing fortress. Hootsuite’s main offices are located several blocks away on East 8th Ave.

The neighbourhood between Main, Cambie, First and Broadway is largely zoned for light industry. From body repair shops to light manufacturing to wholesale supply depots, the neighbourhood has long been a stable bastion of blue-collar jobs.

But in recent years the area has become attractive to the digital, social media and green tech sectors for its supply of relatively cheap buildings and proximity to public transportation. That’s created a question of whether such uses are actually industrial or commercial in nature.

Kent Munro, the city’s assistant director of planning for the area, noted there are at least seven or eight other digital companies in the area, creating a new source of employment.

“Those are good green jobs and the city doesn’t want to lose those jobs,” he said. “We’re exploring if there is a way that we can make some adjustments, not wholesale adjustments but strategic adjustments down there to allow a little bit more to happen.”

The industrial zoning allows for a floor-space ratio of 3.0, meaning a building could be three times the maximum site coverage. Two years ago the city amended the zoning to allow one third of the ratio (called FSR) to be for industrial uses, with the remaining two FSR to be commercial.

Munro said the city isn’t interested in changing away from the industrial zoning.

“We want it to remain industrial. But ... we do know industry continues to change.” He didn’t give a timeline for when changes might be made.

Gillespie said in an interview Friday he’s interested in building a campus that could support digital industry jobs but only after the city “cleans up” the area with a new policy that encourages new types of “industrial” jobs.

“The city is looking at that whole area and realizing they have to start cleaning it up. That started happening when companies like Hootsuite started moving in there,” he said. “Once the city develops a policy around that, we will come in behind that and depending on how they word it, we will make an application and figure out what it is we’re going to do.”

Gillespie said he and Holmes teamed up after Hootsuite took a lease on the property just as Westbank was interested in buying it. They agreed to partner, using Gillespie’s knowledge as a developer and Holmes’ understanding of the digital tech industry. Gillespie said Westbank is a 50-50 owner with Holmes, who personally invested in the purchase.

“It is all green tech at this point. We don’t see it as a potential residential area. In fact it is the opposite. We believe the same thing the city does, which is we want to encourage more digital industry,” Gillespie said.

“Right now you have an industrial zoning that talks about making ice and rubber boots. So it is obvious to everybody in the world that at some point you are going to have to update that zoning. All we are saying is guys, let’s get into this century and talk about what is industry. Industry now, is almost by definition, digital industry. We’re obviously not manufacturing steel on that site.”

Elisa Campbell, the director of regional planning for Metro Vancouver, said the city’s deliberations reflect a growing debate over how to preserve and use industrial land as the types of uses change. While there are many heavy and light industries that require land and may not be suitable for urban areas, industrial zoning is still important inside cities. Metro Vancouver is undertaking a review of those needs over the next year, she said.

“What constitutes industrial activity is in some cases changing and in some cases is not. What we know is there is a lot of concern about the supply of these lands,” Campbell said. “From our perspective it is one that merits a really substantial, focused two-way conversation. We are looking toward a fairly substantive, multi-stakeholder conversation about this.”

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Vancouver looks at industrial land in the digital age

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